Victoria Police start motorcycle lane filtering

Victoria Police will add small dirt bikes to their fleet to allow officers to lane filtering through traffic while patrolling for speeding motorists.

A VicPol release says the 2015 KTM 500 EXC Special Access Motorcycles combine the manoeuvrability of a trail bike with the speed-detection capabilities of traditional road bikes such as their BMW R 1200 models.

Road Policing Assistant Commissioner Doug Fryer says the bikes will be used in areas with high volumes of traffic where they will be able to filter through slow and stationary vehicles.

“Our highway police have traditionally used the larger BMWs during patrols,” he says. “These new additions to the fleet are much lighter, more nimble and well suited to policing the inner city roads.

“The special access bikes can go almost anywhere and provide greater flexibility in urban areas. These motorcycles are particularly effective in enabling police to safely filter through congested areas and detect offences that pose risks to the safety of road-users.

“We are continually looking for opportunities to improve our approach to addressing metropolitan road enforcement and this is just an example of that.”

The lane-filtering police bikes come into service as Victoria on Monday (November 2) joins Queensland, NSW and the ASCT in allowing motorcycle riders to filter through traffic.

Before taking to the traffic on Monday, Victorian riders should read the complete list of regulations.

The Victorian regulations indicate that signs will show riders where lane filtering is not allowed, presumably where the lanes are too narrow.

They are indicated with a lane filtering depiction and a big red line through it, Ghostbusters style. The end to the banned lane filtering zone is indicated by the same sign but with a black line, instead of red, the word “END”.

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8 Comments

I noticed no action camera attached to the side of their helmet.. Not targeting mobile phone usage while driving much, a picture is worth a thousand words so a short 30sec – 90sec video is worth $443 and the loss of 3 Demerit Points.
If they only amended the helmet modification law: The use of double sided tape to attach a action camera is allowed, holes drilled into the helmet is not allowed as it degenerates the safety integrity of the helmet..
In Queensland the Police commissioner encourages motorcyclist to upload a 2mb video of drivers on their mobile phones.

Vicpol should be announcing that their new bikes will be targetting mobile phone use and indicating offences — then drivers would keep an eye out for filtering bikes. It is still good to see them get some press kits out to help publicise the new laws.

For those dissing the signs, the alternative was a Victoria wide ban on filtering in all 40kmk/h zones.

Victoria does not have school zones defined in law so we couldn’t replicate the “school zone” restriction that the other jurisdictions introduced.

The work around for Victoria is for a set of guidelines that will allow the local road authority to restrict filtering in 40kmk/h zones where the road safety statistics or guidelines indicate a reasonable case.

The black sign is particularly bad because it’s a double negative (no more no filtering). Many people – especially car drivers – will still think it means “no filtering” because that’s the meaning of the graphic. It should be replaced by the much simpler and wordless image of a bike between two cars (the image without the circle and bar).

Couldn’t agree more. Just another reason to fine people because they missed the sign, you know, because they are actually paying attention to the road and whats going on around them instead of another sign on the side of the road. So many things to watch out for now, this, that, speed. You seem to have to be looking everywhere but where you need to be to save ya own neck. If you are then you are fined.